First we started with the News Item: a kid in England is making 2,000 pounds (approx. $4,000) every second on Vine. His Vine videos are so popular that brands are paying him that much to promote their brands on his six-second Vine videos. Crazy.

We then spoke with Mike Brooks who discussed in some detail about the website rescue operations he has had to perform because Google has hurt the sites rankings in a seemingly arbitrary way. Indeed about half of his current clients are on the rebound from other SEO companies who have harmed their SEO rankings even if the other company wasn’t really doing anything shady. In fact, Mike said that oftentimes these other companies are doing a good job, but Google’s changes give them a bad reputation. Thus, although he like Google a lot, he also hates them, because you can’t really rely on anything they do or say. One minute you could be on their good side and the next your search rankings fall.

Sometimes, if the SEO damage is substantial, you have to ask “forgiveness” from Google. Mike mentioned how this is done. Even then it may take a long time – months – until they restore your website to good standing and stop removing your website from people search results.

How to know when a website is being harmed by Google’s changes? Mike said the only way to tell is to consistently monitor your SEO rankings in their Analytics tool. Chris remarked that many companies probably don’t check their search rankings regularly, but they could probably tell if their Internet sales suddenly start slipping.

David asked if Google might be a target for antitrust violations but Mike and Ralph Rivera both agreed that the political environment would not allow for such things to take place.

We also discussed the role social media plays in SEO as well as the ability to be found online.

Finally we came to our Tip of the Week: to borrow an earlier tip from friend-of-the-show Dino Dogan, your true social media metrics should not be about the number of likes, followers and connections you amass, but by the number you give instead. The way to gain value on social media is to give first and then receive later.